Performing Policy

This book demonstrates how and why a majority of US artists must now function as producers of their original works, as well as creators. The author shows how, over the span of 20 years, the USA's cultural policy sector radically redefined US artists' practices without cohesively articulating the expectations of artists' new role.

Performance measurement is now a key management tool used by government to assess and enhance public services. It is also used as a tool for public sector transparency and accountability. Despite these noble objectives, performance measurement can also generate counterproductive and sometimes paradoxical outcomes. This book innovatively conceptualises performance measurement as a ‘policy instrument’. Such an approach necessarily invites careful and critical examination of instances of the formation, application and contestation of particular performance measurement regimes, the tools used to measure performance, the way in which performance data is produced and used, and the complex dynamics between professionals, managers and service users that arise from these practices. The book provides detailed empirical examples of performance measurement in the delivery of health, schooling and child welfare services, as well as the problematics of assessing national wellbeing. Instead of a form of scientific and rational management, performance measurement is revealed as an intrinsically contested, socio-politically charged and value laden practice. The book concludes that to succeed in delivering authentic performance improvements public sector managers must be aware of these complex, paradoxical dynamics and the circumstances that make performance measurement perform. This book was originally published as a special issue of Policy Studies.

This book provides a comprehensive search for the basic political drivers of international development cooperation, based on the policy and performance of the OECD countries from the early 1960s to the present. The author focuses on the stated and implemented policies of the four so-called frontrunners and the Western hegemon, scrutinizing the changing trends in the justifications, objectives and guidelines set for the policy and their evolving performance vis-à-vis the international ODA target. Through extensive research, the work examines predominant world-views, societal value systems and foreign policy traditions, in order to find the policy drivers that vary nation to nation and how development assistance has evolved globally.

This series of seven policy studies cover lessons from experience in health system reform, improving the technical quality of health care, income-related inequality in health care, matching supply with demand for physicians and nurses, excessive waiting times, private health insurance, and more.

Shortlist, 2021 Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize In a city struggling to determine just how neoliberal it can afford to be, what kinds of performing arts practices and institutions are necessary—and why? Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, political and economic agendas in the reunified German capital have worked to dismantle long-standing traditions of state‐subsidized theater even as the city has redefined itself as a global arts epicenter. Institutional Theatrics charts the ways theater artists have responded to these shifts and crises both on- and offstage, offering a method for rethinking the theater as a vital public institution. What is the future of the German theater, grounded historically in large ensembles, extensive repertoires, and auteur directors? Examining the restructuring of Berlin’s theatrical landscape and most prominent performance venues, Brandon Woolf argues that cultural policy is not simply the delegation and distribution of funds. Instead, policy should be thought of as an artistic practice of institutional imagination. Woolf demonstrates how performance can critique its patron institutions in order to transform the relations between the stage and the state, between the theater and the infrastructures of its support. Bold, nuanced, and rigorously documented, Institutional Theatrics offers new insights about art, its administration, and the forces that influence cultural production.

In a democracy, we generally assume that voters know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. We also assume that voters consider candidates' competence, honesty, and other performance-related traits. But does this actually happen? Do voters consider candidates’ policy positions when deciding for whom to vote? And how do politicians’ performances in office factor into the voting decision? In Follow the Leader?, Gabriel S. Lenz sheds light on these central questions of democratic thought. Lenz looks at citizens’ views of candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, natural disasters, and episodes of economic boom and bust. Noting important shifts in voters’ knowledge and preferences as a result of these events, he finds that, while citizens do assess politicians based on their performance, their policy positions actually matter much less. Even when a policy issue becomes highly prominent, voters rarely shift their votes to the politician whose position best agrees with their own. In fact, Lenz shows, the reverse often takes place: citizens first pick a politician and then adopt that politician’s policy views. In other words, they follow the leader. Based on data drawn from multiple countries, Follow the Leader? is the most definitive treatment to date of when and why policy and performance matter at the voting booth, and it will break new ground in the debates about democracy.

This book applies various theoretical tools to explore the advantages and disadvantages of performance management systems, the ways in which they can be improved, and the strategies through which they can be designed and integrated into the policy making process. By providing both theoretical insights and practical applications, it offers a unique perspective. Using four methods of research that have been rarely applied in the performance management literature: formal (game-theoretical) modelling, operational management, new institutionalism, and cross country statistical comparisons based on international data sets, the book illuminates different aspects of performance management systems in the public sector. It offers an integrative theoretical framework for explaining and designing such systems and their integration into the policy making process, and will open up new avenues of research, expose scholars and students to new methodological tools and equip public officials, politicians and citizens with practical methods for improving the performance of the public sector.